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Manufacturer issues remote kill command to disable smart vacuum after engineer blocks it from collecting data — user revives it with custom hardware and Python scripts to run offline (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 1 week ago by spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
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An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device. That’s when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn't consented to. The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers' IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after. After a lengthy investigation, he discovered that a remote kill command had been issued to his device.

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[-] stiffyGlitch@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

what...? how much money did that Roomba cost for him to spend that much time and effort on recoding it?!

[-] Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

First, it isn't a roomba, second it says in the article how much it cost, third some people have hobbies and sometimes those hobbies are tinkering, dismantling and hacking things they supposedly own and that sometimes leads to revelations like this. Hope that helps.

[-] Jarix@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

If YOU aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Think about your choices in life after asking such an... interesting question

[-] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I'm not part of the problem I'm the whole damn thing, at least according to my psychiatrist

[-] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

He did it for the greater good. Clearly he'll never be a politician with that level of integrity.

this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
125 points (97.0% liked)

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